Reply by email, a digest and push for inbox-first members

Most of the people who joined your community will not come back by typing your address into a browser. They come back because something landed in their inbox, or buzzed on their phone, and it was worth a tap. When a reply to their question sits in the forum and nothing tells them, the answer might as well not exist.

Here is the real job of notifications on a community site: close the gap between “someone answered” and “the member saw it”. Jetonomy handles the basics for free, with in-app alerts and instant emails for replies and mentions. Jetonomy Pro adds three pieces on top that suit members who live in their inbox: reply by email, a daily or weekly digest, and web push.

Think of this guide as a setup story, in the order you would actually do it. Per piece, you get what it does, what you need before you switch it on, the limits that will otherwise surprise you, and what to tell your members. All three are Pro extensions, and the notification engine they plug into is in the free plugin.

Why the inbox is your front door

Think about how a member of a small, busy community behaves. A question goes up on Monday, and they have a job, a family and forty other tabs. On Tuesday someone answers. Make that member remember your forum exists, log in and go looking, and a fair share of them never will.

Inboxes are different. They are already there every day, and email is the one channel that does not need them to install anything or grant any permission. So the question for a community owner is not “email or forum”. Ask instead “how little can I ask of a member between being notified and being part of the conversation”.

Each of the three Pro features removes a different piece of friction:

• Reply by email removes the trip to the site. Answering happens from the mail app.
• The digest removes the flood. Instead of one email per event, they get one summary on a schedule they chose.
• Web push removes the dependence on email entirely, for the members who would rather have a browser alert.

Each stands alone: you can switch on one, two or all of them, and a member can use any combination. From here, this post goes through each one, then ties them together with a sensible rollout.

What the free plugin already does for you

Before adding anything, know what you start with. Jetonomy sends instant emails through the standard WordPress mail function, so any SMTP plugin you already use will handle delivery. Replies, mentions, join requests and moderation actions email by default. Votes and reactions notify inside the community and you can switch their emails on.

Per member, every notification type has two switches: the in-app one and the email one. Owners set the defaults in the admin, and each member can override them from their own notification settings. A “pause all email” switch also sits on the member’s profile, and it wins over everything else, including the digest.

Since Jetonomy 2.0.1, private messages and badges run through the same notification engine. That matters here, because it means a direct message from Jetonomy Pro’s private messaging, or a badge a member just earned, can reach them by email and push under their normal preferences. For messages, the digest is the exception: it has no message section, so a private message is never folded into a summary.

Hold that last point in mind. Everything below sits on this one engine, which is why a member’s preferences behave the same across email, digest and push.

Reply by email: the forum comes to the member

Reply by email lets a member answer a topic by replying to the notification email. No login, no page load. As a Pro extension, it stays off until you enable it.

How it works

When Jetonomy sends a notification email for a reply to a member’s topic, or a reply to one of their replies, it adds a Reply-To address that looks like reply+{token}@yourdomain. Signed and tied to that member and that topic, the token stays valid for 7 days. A member who replies to the email inside that window gets a reply posted under their own name.

Only those two email types carry the address: reply_to_post and reply_to_reply. Mentions, votes, messages and everything else do not. This is deliberate: quick answers are most natural at these two moments.

Worth knowing: a reply to a reply notification lands on the topic itself, not nested under the specific reply that triggered the email. Because the token points at the topic, the emailed answer joins the main thread.

What you need before you start

Receiving the mail that members send takes one of two routes, and you pick one in the Reply by Email tab of the Jetonomy settings.

IMAP polling. Jetonomy logs in to a mailbox you give it and checks for unread messages every 5 minutes. Check this first: your server needs the PHP imap extension, and if it is missing the poll does nothing. Enter the host, the port (993 is the default), the username and password, and choose SSL or TLS. Because every outgoing Reply-To address carries a different token, the mailbox has to accept anything after reply+, which means a catch-all or plus-addressing on your mail host.

Inbound webhook. Instead of Jetonomy fetching mail, your mail provider pushes each message to a URL on your site: /wp-json/jetonomy/v1/reply-by-email/inbound. On the settings page you will find the full address and a webhook secret. Every request must be signed, and an unsigned one is refused with a 403 even if the token inside it is perfect.

• A Mailgun-style signature is accepted: the provider sends a timestamp, a token and a signature as form fields, and Jetonomy checks an HMAC-SHA256 of the first two against your secret. Timestamps older than 15 minutes are rejected, so a captured request cannot be replayed later.
• Also accepted is a signature header over the raw body, HMAC-SHA256 again.
• SendGrid’s native Inbound Parse does not sign its requests, so it cannot be pointed straight at this URL. Put a relay in front of it that adds a signature, or use IMAP.

Either way, set the email domain on that tab to a domain whose mail actually reaches this setup. By default it takes your site’s hostname, which is only right if that domain’s mail is something you control.

The limits, stated plainly

Be honest with your members about what an emailed reply is.

• Plain text only. No attachments and no HTML. Quoted lines that start with > are stripped, and so is a signature after a -- line, so a reply that is nothing but a quote will not post.
• Ten replies per member per hour. After that, further emailed replies are refused until the hour rolls over.
• The same rules as the website. A banned member cannot reply by email. A closed topic does not accept one. When an emailed reply is refused for a reason like that, Jetonomy emails the sender to say it was not posted, so it does not vanish without a word.

This last behaviour matters more than it looks. Without it, someone who replies to a closed topic would assume it went through. With it, they get an honest answer.

What to tell members

Nothing technical. Add a line to your welcome message: “You can answer by replying to the email.” The feature explains itself the first time they hit reply. Want the specifics for your own team? The Reply by Email feature page lists the settings.

The digest: one email instead of twenty

A busy space can generate a notification email for almost every event. For a member who follows a few spaces that adds up quickly, and the usual result is a mail filter or an unsubscribe. The digest is the antidote: a Pro extension that compiles activity into one email, daily or weekly.

What goes in it

A digest is built per member, from activity since their last one. It holds the top topics by votes, new topics in spaces they follow, replies to their own topics and one trending topic. Summary figures, badges they earned and any new votes on a poll they started ride along too. Messages are not included.

Each digest has an unsubscribe link and a link to manage preferences, and it respects the member’s “pause all email” switch.

What it replaces, and what it does not

Get this part right in your own head, because it decides what members will experience. The digest replaces only two kinds of instant email: replies to a member’s own topics, and new topics in spaces they follow. Sending both would repeat itself, since the digest also covers those two emails.

Everything else keeps its instant email. Because replies in a topic the member only follows are not in the digest, those emails still go out. Mentions still go out. For someone who relies on reply by email, the instant reply notification still matters, because it carries the Reply-To address.

Plan around that interaction. A member who picks a digest gets fewer reply emails, which means fewer chances to answer by email. For members who want to reply from their inbox, instant emails are the better choice. For members who want less noise, the digest is. Let them choose.

Defaults and member choice

In the Email Digest tab you set the site default frequency: daily, weekly, or none, which makes the digest opt-in only. The shipped default is weekly. Members choose none, daily or weekly in their own notification settings.

One subtlety remains. A member who has made no choice receives the digest at the site default. But the digest only takes the place of instant emails for members who made an explicit daily or weekly choice. Someone left on the default gets the weekly summary and keeps their instant emails too. To get a quieter inbox for everyone, set the default to none and ask members to opt in.

A rollout that respects inboxes

Switching this on for a community that already has members? Think about the first week. Setting the default to weekly means everyone with no stored choice starts receiving a digest. This is usually welcome, but tell people it is coming. Post a short announcement in the community that says where members can change it.

Admin options are covered on the Email Digest feature page. Check the subscription statistics in that tab after a week: it shows how many members are on daily, weekly or none, and how many are simply on the default.

Web push: a nudge without email

Some members never check email for a community, but they will tap a browser alert. Web push is the Pro extension for those members, and it is off by default.

What it covers

Push is attached to the free notification engine, so it covers every notification type: replies, mentions, votes, badges, messages and the rest. It uses standard Web Push with VAPID keys that Jetonomy generates for you, and it also carries the push for the native mobile app, through Expo device tokens. The same extension powers notifications for the Jetonomy mobile app.

Two behaviours are worth knowing:

• Push follows the in-app setting. A push is sent when a notification row is created for the member. If a member turned the in-app notification off for a type, no row is made and no push goes out for it.
• Private messages never show their text. The push says who the message is from, such as “New message from” followed by the sender’s name, and nothing else, so a private message never appears on a lock screen.

Turning it on

Enable the extension, then open the Web Push tab in Jetonomy settings and tick Enable Web Push. Your site needs HTTPS. You can set a notification title and an icon there; if you leave the title empty, your site name is used.

Members then see an “Enable notifications” button in the community header. Clicking it asks the browser for permission. Nobody is subscribed without that click, which keeps the feature on the right side of both the browser and your members.

What to expect

Push is a nudge, not a channel to rely on. A member can decline the permission, clear it later or use a browser that does not support it. Treat it as an addition to email, not a replacement. For the members who do opt in, it is the fastest of the three.

The Web Push feature page lists the full settings.

Putting the three together

Day one does not need all of them. A sequence that suits most communities:

1. Start with the free setup. Confirm that your WordPress site can send mail reliably, through an SMTP plugin if needed, and send yourself a test notification. None of the Pro pieces help if the basic email does not arrive.
2. Next comes the digest. With no server work beyond WordPress cron, it is the easiest win. Pick a default and announce it.
3. Add reply by email when you have a mailbox or a provider. This is the one with real setup, so schedule it for when you have an hour. Send a test reply to yourself from a second account before you tell anyone.
4. Finish with web push. It works best once members already trust your emails, because the opt-in button reads as a convenience, not a demand.

Underneath it all, each channel serves a different member. Members who want everything answer by email, and members who want less read a digest. Anyone who never opens email can tap a push instead. You are not choosing one for your whole community. You are letting each member pick the version of your community that fits their day.

A testing checklist before you announce

Spend twenty minutes on this before you tell your members anything. Use two accounts of your own so you can be both sides of the conversation.

• Reply to a topic from the second account and confirm the first receives the email, and that it has a Reply-To address starting with reply+.
• From the first account, reply to that email. Wait up to 5 minutes if you use IMAP. Make sure the reply appears on the topic under the right name.
• Close the topic and try again, and you should get an email saying the reply was not posted.
• Set one account to a daily digest and wait for the next run, or use the test option on the Email Digest tab. Check which emails stopped arriving.
• Turn on push, click the header button in a browser and trigger a notification. Confirm the title and icon, and that a private message shows only the sender.
• Switch the first account’s “pause all email” on and confirm neither instant emails nor the digest arrive.

If anything on that list surprises you, it will surprise a member too. Fix it, or write the surprise into your welcome message.

Where to go next

Still deciding between plans? The Jetonomy pricing page shows which features sit in Free and which in Pro. For the notification settings your members will see, the email notification how-to walks through them. And if you are weighing how much moderation work a busy inbox creates, the weekly moderation workflow is a good companion.

Notifications are the least glamorous part of running a community and the part that most affects whether people return. Set them up once, test them as a member would, and then leave them alone.